This could be your sweetest Valentine’s Day ever if you and your sweetie plan a getaway to Bluegreen timeshare’s The Suites at Hershey.

Spend Valentine’s Day at a romantic destination where the air is fragrant with chocolate. The community of Hershey, Pennsylvania, home to The Hershey Company, Bluegreen timeshare’s The Suites at Hershey, and all the chocolate-themed magic of Hersheypark, is known as the sweetest place on earth. Relaxing at Bluegreen’s The Suites at Hershey makes all that sweetness even sweeter.

Enjoy spacious, modern two-bedroom, two-bath accommodations, with kitchen and dining area. Explore the countryside of rural Pennsylvania, historic sites, charming shopping and dining venues and, of course, everything chocolate at Hersheypark. With a year-round indoor pool, seasonal outdoor pool, fitness center, comfy beds and romantic fireplaces, you and your Valentine can relax and enjoy your getaway or bring along all your “little Valentines” for a family fun vacation.

Great deals are available in Bluegreen timeshare and Bluegreen timeshare resales and rentals.

More Bluegreen timeshare and The Suites at Hershey news from The Timeshare Authority blog:

• Chocolate-ly Goodness, The Suites at Hershey Bluegreen Timeshare
• Bluegreens Hershey Timeshare Resort Hosting Fans of WWE SmackDown
• A Chocolate Flavored Timeshare Vacation
• Hershey Timeshares and Chocolate—It’s All Good News
• Cool Technology for Bluegreen Timeshare Owners, Good Move for the Industry

Bluegreen’s The Suites at Hershey are among an elite number of timeshare resorts that carry the RCI Gold Crown property designation.

We are excited to share with you our company’s new ad, which appeared for the first time in the February 2012 issue of Developments Magazine from the American Resort Development Association (ARDA).

As the ad explains, we offer:

“Timeshare Resales You Can Say YES To.”

Because we’ve taken care of the “no’s”

No upfront fees.

No strings attached.

No kidding.

We deliver proven resort resale and rental solutions, customized to meet your needs and your high standard of customer care.

Your business. Your way. From a company you can trust.

We are proud of the ad, proud of what we accomplished since our founding in 2003–very proud of the customers we’ve served and the relationships we’ve built.

We wanted to take this opportunity to share this message with you, to invite you to watch for this advertisement and others we’ve produced that will be appearing this year in timeshare and vacation ownership industry publications.

And most of all, we want to invite you to do just what the ad suggests: Contact us at 317-213-2553 and find out more about how we help timeshare buyers, renters, sellers, developers, HOAs, resellers, and others who have inventory and seek to buy, rent, or sell timeshare.

…no kidding.

Read this month’s issue of Developments here: http://www.nxtbook.com/ygsreprints/ygs/g24005arda_dev_feb12/

Last week Florida’s Timeshare Resale Accountability Act passed the Business and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee on Tuesday with a 14-0 vote. On Thursday, the bill’s Senate counterpart, SB 1408, received unanimous approval from the Regulated Industries Committee.

Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, R-Orlando, sponsors HB 1001. SB 1408 is sponsored by Sen. Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando.

The bill has the support of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as well as that of the American Resort Development Association (ARDA).

Among other requisites, the proposed bill would prohibit a timeshare sales company from telling timeshare owners it has a buyer lined up unless the reseller provides the current timeshare owner with the name, address and telephone number of the potential buyer. The bill also provides for an “unwaivable right to cancel” within 10 days of a timeshare sale.

Uniform guidelines for timeshare resale services are much needed, and if structured fairly, should enhance the industry and strengthen consumer confidence in the product.

Previous news on The Timeshare Authority related to the proposed new Florida timeshare laws:

Timeshare resales: History will keep repeating itself until we finally get it right

Today in Timeshare from The Resort Trades

ARDA Supports the Proposed Florida Timeshare Resale Accountability Act

Vacationing can be an important part of your healthier new routine says VacationBetter.org and the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), and the timeshare industry is working hard to make it easier to do.

A media release yesterday by VacationBetter.org points out that your resolve to live a healthier lifestyle doesn’t have to dwindle as the New Year transitions into a daily routine. A yearlong—or better still, lifelong—commitment to live a healthier life includes both downtime away from your daily grind and pressures and the opportunity to enjoy more healthful experiences during that vacation time.

David Gilbert, executive vice president of resort sales and marketing Americas for timeshare exchange company, Interval International, says, “Many of our clients’ properties in the Americas and the Caribbean have fitness centers and full-service spas, and those with restaurants are presenting healthier menu options.  This increased consciousness of wellness is reflected in Interval’s most recent U.S. member profile.  Reporting on their preferred vacation activities, nearly half of those surveyed include working out and exercising while close to 40 percent cite spa services.”

As Howard Nusbaum, president and CEO of ARDA, explains, “Health and wellness amenities are growing in popularity among timeshare owners and resorts are now using these programs to attract new timeshare consumers unfamiliar that such vacation products exist.”

Read: TIMESHARE INDUSTRY SAYS WELLNESS TREND IS HERE TO STAY IN 2012

Do you have a timeshare advertised for sale or rent through Sell My Timeshare NOW? If so, we invite you… urge you… to visit our Facebook page and talk about it!

Here’s an example of what one Sell My Timeshare NOW client posted on our corporate Facebook page:

MONICA NARVAEZ

TIMESHARE FOR SALE OR RENT IN DOWNTOWN ORLANDO, FLORIDA, http://www.sellmytimesharenow.com/timeshares/index/

content/details/AdNumber/205367/ FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ANY QUESTIONS.

As quickly as a status update and at no additional cost to her, this timeshare owner expanded the visibility of her Westgate Lakes Resort and Spa Phase II timeshare for sale or rent ad. Because Monica included her SellMyTimeshareNOW.com Ad Number (# 205367) with a direct hyperlink to the ad, we can recognize her as our client, and are delighted to help her share her ad.

Other Facebook friends and visitors will use the ad number and hyperlink, which she included, to take them to the ad page on our Sell My Timeshare NOW website, which is the ad for her specific property. On that page, interested buyers and renters can learn more about the resort’s features and amenities. By taking a moment to post her timeshare ad on our Facebook page, Monica increased the exposure her timeshare for sale or rent will receive proportionally by the power of Facebook.

Do you have a Sell My Timeshare NOW ad for timeshare for sale or rent?

We encourage you to add it to our Facebook page. Just go to: https://www.facebook.com/SellMyTimeshareNOW.

Be sure you “Like” Us and then share the message of your timeshare resale or timeshare rental. Remember, you must include your valid Sell My Timeshare NOW ad number and/or hyperlink to that ad page or your ad will not remain in the publicly visible section of our Facebook page.

Like the idea? Please remember to “Like” us, too… Because we really like the idea of you adding your ad on our page!

The following article appears in this month’s issue of The Resort Trades and is republished here with their permission.  We hope you will also read it online or in their print publication.

Timeshare: 2012 means the need for more cowbell

By Jason Tremblay

Presuming that the prognostications for a year 2012 doomsday are in error, there is still much about the upcoming year that promises to be remarkable, even watershed in its impact on all our lives.

Here in the U.S., in 2012, we will elect (or re-elect) a president and for a while, we will discuss it daily – hourly. Other changes will happen that we will pay much less attention to because change has become so normal that we only notice if the changing stops. The IRS, the USGA, and the NCAA will all tinker with their rules and regulations, Apple will introduce yet another version of the iPhone, and Facebook will change a little or a lot, and most likely will change both a little AND a lot.

But what will the year 2012 mean to the timeshare industry? What will change in timeshare and vacation ownership sales, resales, and rentals?

The truth is, these are the wrong questions to ask. The better, more insightful questions are:

• What will 2012 bring for current timeshare owners that will make buying, owning, renting, and selling timeshare an easier, more flexible and more trustworthy process?

• And the far tougher question to answer; how do we get there from here, creating an owner-centric product and industry?

Timeshares: we are already behind

Much of the timeshare industry is just getting used to the idea that consumers buy and rent timeshare online. In 2011, online response to retail promotions (for all types of retail sales, not exclusively timeshare and vacation accommodations) increased by 33 percent over 2010. Consumer spending for online purchases in the first three quarters of 2011 was up 13 percent over the same period in the previous year. This translates to nearly $125 billion and that number does not include the seasonally strong sales of November and December 2011.

Just as many timeshare developers and others have finally come to grasp that search engines define user experience, 2012 will hit with the revelation that timeshare consumers, as Internet users, now define the search engine experience.

For a nanosecond in the timeline of Internet experience, businesses realized that content was king and were able to go for it. And just as we’ve all become vaguely comfortable with blogging, videoing, and otherwise creating Internet content, we are being presented with the reality that content creation has become secondary to content curation. We have become what Steven Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of magnify.net, describes as a “curation nation” where those who can quantify, parse, and categorize the surging data stream of content are fast becoming the definers of what succeeds and what fails in business today.

Pursued by data

Where once we went in search of data, data now searches for us. Social media brings a stream – a torrent – of information that follows us from our computers to our tablets to our phones, television sets, and automobiles. If you haven’t recently been through the appliance section at your local big box store, you may be surprised to learn that today’s refrigerators not only deliver ice and water to the door, but a touch screen data center with Internet access as well. Information now pursues us and remarkably, we like it that way.

In the past year, mobile Internet searches have quadrupled, and for many items, one in seven searches is now made from a mobile device. Users of smart phones have now downloaded apps nearly 11 billion times and the demand for mobile apps is not expected to peak until sometime in 2013 – that is unless nuances unfold to create even more demand for even more apps, which is of course entirely likely.

Set fire to the rulebook

The timeshare industry can be like other groups that strive to write and incessantly refine rulebooks by which to guide, govern and control their members/users and marketplaces. If we stick with that path, we will become annoying, misunderstood, and outdated. And if you troll around in public perception, listening to how often and how brutally timeshares and timeshare sales are the butt of some pretty pathetic jokes, then you may even come to the conclusion that the industry, as it stands, is already annoying, misunderstood, and outdated in the minds of many.

We have to step down as conductors. The world is changing almost faster than we can process the change. Timeshares are a truly great product, challenged only by questionable marketing and sales models.
Consumers are going to define how vacation ownership is used and enjoyed. Current owners and future buyers and renters will dictate the product, its terms, how we market it to them and even how it is bought, rented or sold.

We have to stop orchestrating. The bell is already tolling; this is the reality of business in the year 2012. Let’s embrace and respond to a new tune. Timeshares need more cowbell and the marketplace is playing our song.

In the midst of double digit unemployment and the most unstable US economy since the great Depression, gainfully employed people are walking away from their jobs.

Alexandra Levit, a former nationally-syndicated business and workplace columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the author of Blind Spots: The 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success, writes about this phenomenon in an article titled, “Good Culture Is In, Inflated Salaries Are Out.”

Ms. Levit says, “Employees at all levels—especially women—are stepping away from positions that will pay them the highest salary, and moving into ones that provide them a better quality of life.”

She goes on to explain that satisfaction with one’s life and one’s income really has little correlation by using the following example:  Certain  global surveys have asked people to rank how satisfied they are with their lives on a  scale from 1 to 7 with 1 being “not at all satisfied with my life” and 7 being “completely satisfied with my life”.

American multimillionaires ranked at an average score of 5.8, which doesn’t sound surprising one way or the other until you realize that the Masai people of Kenya, Africa, who live without electricity or water, and spend their lives herding cattle, also score 5.8.

Life is short and our days are precious. The security of a home, job, and savings are important. But so are the gifts we give ourselves in life … time with those we love, sunsets across quiet water and sunrise on the mountain top. You may never own a second home, or even a first. But do everything in your power to step back from your routine, to duck out of the rat race, every now and then.

So what if you can’t buy a cabin in the mountains? Buy a timeshare resale, load up your kids and the dog, and for one week a year be the “owners” of that mountain getaway. Perhaps your demands are so great you cannot take a week away from your job. That’s okay, too. Take a couple of days or a long weekend in a timeshare rental; you won’t even have to pay to eat out. Just get away. Take a holiday. Give yourself a break.

… Because you won’t find happiness in a paycheck or a bankbook. You’ll find it in the moments where you break free and create everlasting memories with those you love most.

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” Thomas Jefferson

High-energy people often say, “You make your own luck.” As it turns out, researchers are proving that statement may be overwhelmingly accurate. Here’s how it works:

Expectation drives results. If you woke up this morning thinking, “oh no, it’s Friday the 13^th” then you may have set yourself up for bad luck and negative experiences. But if, on the other hand, you bounded out of bed this morning saying, “Thank goodness it’s Friday the 13^th, my lucky day!” then you very likely laid the groundwork for good luck and positive experiences.

Research proves that people who expect good results are more likely to receive them than are people who expect poor results. But this is less about your capability to control the universe and more about your beliefs driving your own self confidence, actions, and ultimately your success. As Professor Ben Fletcher, PhD, and  a specialist in the study of how behavioral changes improve your lot in life, explains, “It’s not that there’s some magic to any of this. Expectancy is a real driver of behavior.”

Lucky People Keep Getting Luckier

Lucky people expect positive results therefore they act in ways that set themselves up to experience these and other positive outcomes. When opportunities avail themselves, lucky people are open to seeing them. “Unlucky” people are often so focused on avoiding or dealing with misfortune they anticipate experiencing that they miss the open door of possibilities.

Dr. Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor, tested the theory that unlucky people are essentially blinded to opportunity. He asked a group of test subjects to identify whether they were lucky or unlucky. Then he gave all of the subjects a copy of the same newspaper and asked them to count the photos in the paper. Published in the paper was also a large ad that said, “Tell the experimenter that you have seen this and win $250.”

The majority of the self-identified lucky people saw the ad; the majority of those who had identified themselves as unlucky, missed it.

How to be Lucky in Timeshares

With all the bad press about timeshare fraud, you could easily be deterred from taking advantage of the great deals in timeshare resales and timeshare rentals. In the process, you would miss some of the most affordable vacation options out there. You would wind up continuing to take your holidays in a crowded hotel room or on the pullout couch at Aunt Louise and Uncle Henry’s house. But isn’t it time you stop letting other people have all the good luck?

Get lucky by first doing your self-analysis of what really matters most to you in a vacation. Decide if you want luxury, entertainment, or a quiet retreat. Consider when you can be available to holiday… can you go any time of the year or are you restricted by work or school holidays? Decide whether you want to be able to leave your vacation ownership property to your heirs or whether you are just fine to use it and enjoy it now, without planning it as a bequest to your children. Lastly, think about how you like to vacation now and how those preferences will change over time. For instance, will your kids always love a theme park vacation or one day will they prefer to hit the ski slopes instead?

Now do your research. There are thousands of timeshare resorts available, of all sizes, locations, terms of ownership, and level of amenities. There are great deals in new timeshare and even better deals in timeshare resales and timeshare rentals.

Be lucky. Claim your own good fortune in the form of easy vacation planning, great experiences, wonderful memories, and time you spend relaxing, recharging, and reenergizing your life. Approach timeshares with your eyes wide open to all the opportunities.

After all, with 2012 being a year we hit the max number of Friday the 13ths, wouldn’t it be excellent is that just happened to be your lucky day?

Contact us at Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services. We will help you plan a fortuitous vacation experience for Friday, April 13, 2012; Friday July 13, 2012; or any other “lucky” day of the year.

More on the subject:

How To Make Your Own Luck a Fast Company Interview with Dr. Richard Wiseman on the topic of Luck.

Perspective Magazine has announced it has opened online voting to timeshare and fractional industry professionals for its 2012 awards. You can cast your vote by going to http://perspectivemagazine.com as a registered site member and then clicking on the Awards icon to begin the process.

The Perspective Magazine Awards Program is sponsored by Holiday Systems International and allows thousands from the timeshare industry to vote for these awards. The unique system totals the results of the industry peer votes into one wildcard vote, which is then considered along with the votes of four timeshare and fractional industry judges, with each of the five votes accounting for equal weight (20 percent) in the decision process.

This year’s awards categories include “Best Timeshare Unit” and “Best Fractional Resort” among others. The category of “Best Developer Partner” has been expanded to include nominees from companies with more than 50 employees and also timeshare companies with less than 50 employees.

Voting ends January 27, 2012. Award winners will be announced at the Gala dinner at the Hacienda Tres Rios Resort on February 2, 2012. This a part of the January 31 – February 2, 2012 GNEX 2012 Global Event being held at the Ritz Carlton Cancun in Cancun, Mexico. Sell My Timeshare NOW will be the Lunch sponsor during Day Two of GNEX 2012

The following excerpt is from the article “Today in Timeshare” written by Sharon Drechsler-Scott for the January 2012 issue of The Resort Trades. It is reprinted here with permission from The Resort Trades. Described as a “Window into the industry” we encourage you to read this timely article in full in the print edition of the magazine or online at: http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1v5cg/January2012TheResort/resources/14.htm

…Closing remarks: Jason Tremblay, CEO, Sell My Timeshare NOW

While investigating the proposed introduction of timeshare resale legislation in Florida, Resort Trades caught up with the owner of the resale firm, Sell My Timeshare NOW, Jason Tremblay. As he puts its, “Resales and transfer companies are topics about which  I certainly have a lot of passion. No entrepreneur wants to hear the government is going to impose an increased burden on their business and obviously, compliance with additional regulations will cost Sell My Timeshare Now time and money. However, we are supportive of regulations that are reasonable and which can be enforced fairly.”

Tremblay compares the current abuse of consumers by resale operators who behave unethically and unlawfully to the situation in which timeshare found itself in the early ‘80s prior to the introduction of timeshare regulations: Then as now, there were a few bad players using clearly unethical marketing practices that threatened the very foundations of the industry.

“We hope to see that Florida Attorney General Bondi will carefully review ARDA’s Timeshare Resale Model Act while crafting her proposed bill with an eye to ensuring that regulations will be enforceable. For example, we understand that one portion of her draft legislation calls for all third-party advertisers to be able to disclose past success rates, regardless of whether they solicit customers (which we do not). For those of us who frequently connect buyers directly with owners, we have no way of tracking the success of those contacts once they are conversing independently. So we do hope this proposed legislation will understand the need for practicality in their requirements for advertisers.”

“But overall,” says Tremblay, “we are very glad to see some legislation being considered that will reduce consumer fraud. It’s been a space that has been unregulated for too long. And it will be far easier to stop someone who is clearly breaking the law than it would be to prove the intent to commit fraud as things stand today.”